Red Bull Stratos Project Remade in LEGO

Felix Baumgartner’s jump from the stratosphere was undoubtedly one of the most publicized events of last week. As expected, it started to inspire people into creating geeky reproductions of the event, and this LEGO one is only the beginning.

LEGO brick seem to be the tools of the trade for everything. We’ve seen houses, landscapes and even record-breaking towers made of these. This time, begging for our attention is yet another record-breaking event remade in LEGO: the Red Bull Stratos project, which involved the jump from the stratosphere of Austrian sky-diver, daredevil and BASE jumper Felix Baumgartner.

On this occasion, Felix Baumgartner set not one, but three world records, namely the altitude record for a manned balloon flight, greatest free fall velocity and parachute jump from the highest altitude. After all, he skydived from an altitude of 39 km and reached a speed of 1,342 km/h. Since that is a mind-boggling 421.95 meters per second and the speed of sound is 340.29 m/s, Felix Baumgartner’s jump also marked the first human projectile to break the sound barrier. It is rather safe to assume that his records will not be broken anytime soon.

The LEGO Red Bull Stratos was made as an ad for this month’s Vienna Model Makers Fair. The space-themed LEGO men are presented along a miniaturized weather balloon and a capsule that might as well have been a bottle in its previous life. Of course, the capsule did not go up to 39 km, as the real one did, nor did the LEGO skydiver reach that amazing speed, but still, it is very creative. In one aspect, though, the LEGO reproduction is better than the original. The soundtrack of the following clip is uplifting. However, this makes a lot of sense, since the clip is meant to be an ad and people are supposed to remember it not only for its video content, but also for the soundtrack.

While very nice, the above pictures do not do justice to the LEGO reproduction of the event. The following video is far more exciting and seems to be pretty close to reality. The main discrepancy is in the duration of the reproduction. While Felix Baumgartner’s total jump lasted around 10 minutes, in the following video, it takes a bit over a minute.

In case you are in Vienna between October 25 and 28, visiting the Model Maker Fair would be a great idea.